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"Seems if 'twa'n't no more'n yesterday that I was carryin' victuals to keep that child from starvin', and now she's an heiress, and here I be. Well, the Lord's ways ain't ourn." A little old woman, twisted all awry by a paralytic shock, who was feebly assisting the poor-mistress, uttered these reflections in a high-keyed, quavering voice.
The poor-mistress confided to old lady Peaseley that "there wasn't as much satisfaction in havin' Mirandy as if she hadn't got proputty, even if she didn't seem to feel it none: she couldn't help feelin' as if the minister 'n' his wife had come to tea;" and she opened the best room, with all its glories of hair-cloth furniture, preserved funeral wreaths, and shell Bunker Hill Monument, and had the spare chamber swept and garnished.
"I suppose poor folks have a right to come in here out of the rain," she said, advancing to the fire and seating herself with a sullen and dejected aspect. Little Dr. Pingree, who felt the arrival to be very inopportune, nevertheless gallantly hastened to replenish the fire. The poor-mistress hospitably offered to remove the visitor's wet wrappings, but she shook her head.
If things was as they used to be, I should jest sing out to her to come right up here; but, bein' she's such an heiress, I s'pose I'd better go down and open the front door." But before the brisk poor-mistress could reach the front door her visitor had entered, the kitchen.
The poor-mistress commented upon the saying in the midst of her numerous family that night: "She's got that selfish, tempery woman saddled onto her for life, and she'll work her fingers to the bone for them boys, that ain't anything to her, and won't be apt to amount to much, for there never was one of them Spencers that did, and she calls that the kingdom of heaven!"
The Lord made men different, and I s'pose it's all right; but sometimes it seems kind of hard." The large, firm mouth quivered like a child's. "She was a reg'lar little spitfire, Melissy Whitin' was: there wa'n't nothin' to her but temper. I'll warrant Ephrum Spencer has got his come-uppance before this time," said the poor-mistress, with satisfaction.
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